


useless equations

by Pensysto



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Light Angst, POV Outsider, POV Second Person, Post-999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, Post-Canon, Pre-Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, Stream of Consciousness, also sigma's basically on level with the rest of the OCs, basically the couple months before junpei became mr. grumpy detective, just like these tags!!!, not exactly but it's a bit rambly, they went to the same college + I will die on this hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-09-01 05:44:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20253112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pensysto/pseuds/Pensysto
Summary: He disappeared for a week, is the thing. Up and vanished without telling anyone. When he got back, he brushed off all the worried questions - said there was a family emergency back home, he'd had to hop the soonest flight, no time to tell anyone or email any professors. It should've ended there, everything back to normal.But Junpei came back different.





	useless equations

**Author's Note:**

> me, strolling up to this fandom ten years late with starbucks: anyone in the mood for some niche junpei postcanon? no? oh well

Tenmyouji Junpei is different.

If you're just meeting him, it's not that noticeable. He's not that tall, but not that short. His hair's messy, but not ridiculous. He's Japanese, an international student, but it’s not like your college isn’t diverse. His fashion sense is _atrocious_, but in an almost endearing way. 

There's still something off about him, though, something that doesn't always register consciously. Something pinging in the back of your skull about the look in his eyes. People say he changed, back at the start of November. You never paid him all that much attention before - different circles, only a few mutual friends - but you know something happened. Everyone does.

He disappeared for a week, is the thing. Up and vanished without telling anyone. When he got back, he brushed off all the worried questions - said there was a family emergency back home, he'd had to hop the soonest flight, no time to tell anyone or email any professors. It should've ended there, everything back to normal.

But Junpei came back _different_. His shoulders tenser, his voice quieter, his fingers twitchier. And if you look closely enough, you can see the constant fear in his eyes.

People have guessed what happened to him, of course; everyone’s got their own ideas. Erica from your stats class swears it's PTSD from some kind of warzone. Toby on the football team figures he was kidnapped. Your roommate Heidi jokes one night that maybe he just had a really, really shitty breakup.

(At every party that her sorority throws, your friend Alex tries to get him drunk enough to spill the beans. Usually, he just rambles about pseudoscience and psychological phenomena. This happens often enough and on such a regular basis that Toby changes his answer to _kidnapped by a mad psychologist_.)

The truth? Nobody knows. They’re all grasping at straws, trying to find a reason for what happened. But the look in his eyes doesn’t tell you what happened; it just tells you that something is different.

That something is wrong.

* * *

Tenmyouji Junpei is paranoid.

Everyone’s got a story about something completely out of the blue that made him freeze, recoil, duck out of the room. Erica has a spreadsheet of every topic or item that’s even slightly bothered him (in both the interest of not triggering panic attacks and trying to piece together what the fuck happened) and the list is both unending and completely random. Christmas. Mummies. The Titanic. That one pharmaceutical company that shut down last month. Whatever it is, whatever someone says or whatever he sees, his eyes go a little wider, his breathing a little faster, and he starts looking for a way out.

He’s good at exits. Sometimes you don’t know he’s looking for one until he’s gone.

Heidi says he closes windows in any room he's in, glancing out of them for just a moment before compulsively slamming them shut. Doesn’t he know, she groans to you, that it’s a million degrees out? Doesn’t he know that I have needs? And you shrug and tell her that maybe she should start bringing a water bottle to class, and she grumbles that maybe she should just flood the damn classroom, maybe that’ll teach him a lesson on keeping his exits open.

You think that’s kind of funny until a week later, when Toby jokingly pushes Junpei into a pool and he sinks like a rock and, once he finally scrambles out, can't stop hyperventilating. It’s not funny anymore, the look of panic in his eyes, so you don't say anything when Junpei shuts the windows, giving the lake outside an icy look.

(Toby adds _water_ to the list. Heidi edits it to be _drowning_. Erica marks it with an asterisk as requiring further research.)

Sigma - the grad student down the hall who’s been dating Erica for a month - he shares a late-night chem lab with Junpei this semester, and he doesn’t report too much out of the ordinary besides a weird amount of glucose trivia until - 

Hey, he says suddenly, in one of the study sessions he organized for your floor (because, he claims, he can’t focus without other people, although you suspect he just wanted an audience for his bad puns). Junpei. He have a thing with suffocation or something?

And Erica makes a face and asks if he means something gross, which is a definite consideration when it comes to her boyfriend, but he shakes his head, because _wow_, Erica, way to just assume the absolute worst of his noble intentions, and doesn’t she know that he would _never_ say something like that, and she shoots back that maybe he hit his head and doesn’t remember all those dirty jokes he was cracking just _yesterday_. And you half expect the conversation to keep derailing along that line, but Sigma gets back on track and says, he doesn’t like the gas masks.

The masks? you ask, and Sigma nods and says that he avoids them, doesn’t like working at the table next to them, and with the pool thing last week he just figured it’s a breathing thing. And that makes sense, you figure, and so do the rest of them, and you go back to studying until someone has the genius idea to mention their new kitten, and Sigma gets that glint in his eyes so it's time for you to make a hasty exit.

Next time you’re at the chem lab, you take the table next to the gas masks, sitting in neat rows on a shelf next to a _FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY_ sign. They look normal enough, even if they’re a bit creepy. Safety equipment; who the hell is scared of safety equipment? Junpei, that’s who, and you really can’t say you’re surprised.

(_choking ;)_ is what Sigma adds to the spreadsheet later that night. You edit it to be _gas masks_, and he adds the wink back, and you figure that’s an okay compromise.)

The only rule for the spreadsheet is that two people have to verify that something bothers Junpei, and this usually works to keep things on topic. Unfortunately, you’re pretty sure the weirdest thing you’ve seen him do is something that only you know about. It’s not that he trusts you or anything - you just happened to pause before entering the hallway one day, watching him from around the corner before he went into your literature classroom.

So you saw the way he tensed up and held his breath for just a moment, palm splayed flat against the wall next to the door, before hurriedly turning the knob and going inside.

You don’t know what to put on the spreadsheet for that, so you keep it to yourself.

* * *

Tenmyouji Junpei is smart.

Not exactly a genius; Erica sits next to him in your stats class and says he usually gets Bs. But he's got some kind of scholarship, and he's got a knack for numbers. It’s not as weird as the rest of his problems, sure, but it’s up there for a reason.

So a thousand and three, plus six-two-eight plus eight fifty is, uh, Alex says, trying to count up the money in her sorority treasury. It's not a hard problem, but she forgot her calculator and she may or may not be drunker than a skunk at nine in the morning, so you just sit patiently and wait for your stats professor to show up while she tries to count it out on her fingers.

Two thousand four hundred eighty-one, says Junpei from where he's sitting in front of you. He doesn't turn around to look at either of you, too focused on his own paper. Erica, who’s keeping an eye on him from his left, has told you he spends half of this class writing down almost weirdly basic addition problems. Six, he adds as an afterthought, tilting his mess of brown hair to the right.

It's not six, Alex says, blinking and just tuning in. That's stupid. It's way more than six.

Right, Junpei says. It's two thousand four hundred eighty-one, that's what I said.

Alex frowns, upset that she doesn't have enough fingers to double-check his math.

What's the six for, then? you ask him.

Two and four and eight and one is fifteen, he says, still not looking at you. Fifteen breaks to one and five, one and five is six. That's the digital root.

(You can see Erica tilting her head at that.)

What's the point of that, Alex grumbles, finally accepting Junpei's answer and typing it into the computer. Okay, so. Two-four-eight-one plus a thousand forty-two plus twenty-one hundred and two is…? And she doesn't even bother trying it on her own before glancing down at Junpei.

Junpei takes a second longer than before, probably to decipher the numbers she was saying. Five thousand six hundred twenty-five, he says.

You wait for him to say the digital root thing, too, but he doesn't - just frowns to himself, rubbing his left wrist.

Thanks, Alex says, typing in the number. You lean over, double-checking what she writes, and you do the math yourself.

Nine, right? you ask Junpei, and his hand tightens around his wrist.

Yeah, he says after a moment. Nine.

* * *

Tenmyouji Junpei has nightmares.

You find this out with everyone else - at yet another sorority party, a week after Alex's last attempt to drink the truth out of him. She lamented to you the next day that he just kept rambling about a bulldog and abstract art and a _funyarinpa_. Seriously, she said, what the fuck is a _funyarinpa_? 

And you had no idea, and the internet didn’t have any answers, so you spent some time speculating. Maybe it's his girlfriend's name, Erica suggested, because it sounds Japanese enough. But Alex said that sounded racist, and besides, who's ever heard of a pretty girl with a name like _funyarinpa_, and the conversation went from there.

But anyway, it's two in the morning and Junpei is still here, for some reason, lying on Alex's couch, and you know he's out of it because this is the most relaxed you've seen him in months.

Junpei's asleep, you tell the ten or so people clustered in the kitchen, and you half expect someone to go try and draw a dick or two on his face but instead, everyone goes kinda quiet.

Someone - a freshman, you think, someone who didn't know Junpei before - she asks if he's okay because he didn't seem all there earlier. And you have to wrack your brain a bit, because sure, Junpei went and shut every window in Alex's living room and went deathly pale when Alex brought up Christmas and Sigma made a dumb Santa Claus pun, but that's sort of just par for the course at this stage.

He's always like this, Heidi pipes up from the back, and everyone sort of vaguely mhms and the topic slowly changes back to future parties and exams coming up and does anyone want to go play beer pong and it's maybe ten minutes before the noise starts. Everyone shuts up because maybe it was a police siren and you just didn't hear it right but no, that's definitely someone shouting, afraid and pained, and Alex books it to the living room and you follow behind and there he is. 

He's shivering, eyes screwed shut, arms curled tightly against himself and his puffy vest. Brown hair drenched in sweat, legs thrashing against the old leather couch. Alex leans over, tries to shake him awake, then throws up her hands and goes to find a blanket. If he pukes, she tosses over her shoulder, I'm not cleaning it up.

No one else is moving, so you crouch next to him, painfully aware of all the eyes trained on the two of you. Hey, you say gently, leaning forward, touching his hand. Junpei? It's okay, Junpei. Wake up.

And his eyes flash open, but they're wide and afraid and a million miles away. He grabs onto your wrist with his left hand, his grip like iron. Clover? he breathes out.

No, you say. Junpei, you're at Alex's house - 

They're dead, he says, and you shut up because the murmur of the crowd behind you is completely still now. They're all dead, Clover, did… are you…

He squeezes your wrist again. His other hand moves to grip his shoulder. The axe, he whispers to you. The bracelets. Seven, three, two - _don't kill me_. Clover, _please_.

Junpei, you try to tell him. You're safe, it's okay.

Safe, he mumbles, his grip going slack. Snake. Truth, gone, truth… And his eyes slide closed again, and Alex throws a blanket on top of him, narrowly missing your head.

Jesus, she says, her voice just a bit too loud to be natural. Is he wasted or what? And you can hear the tremble in her voice, the uncertainty at having stepped on a landmine that no one knows how to deal with. And you watch as Erica pulls out her phone, probably updating the spreadsheet - although you have no idea what she’s labeling _this_ as.

Junpei eventually goes home, escorted out the door at three am by Toby and Sigma, and you're pretty sure he doesn't remember anything about it, since he talks to you in class same as he always has. And it's weird, letting him copy your notes and asking questions about the lecture, knowing that he's hazily pleaded with you to spare his life. But he doesn't say anything, so you don't either.

Now and then you open your laptop to look up _Clover_, and _deaths_, and _snakes_ and _bracelets_ and _early November_, but you don't find anything. Maybe that's a good thing.__

* * *

Tenmyouji Junpei is aching.

Not physically; as far as you can tell, he’s healthy as he's ever been. But as sure as his notes are filled with useless equations, his backpack has at least two depressing romance novels that he pulls out whenever lectures get boring. He gets cagey when people ask about his love life, which they do a lot when they’re drunk at one of Alex’s parties; it’s not that rare to hear him bark a warning at someone asking too many questions.

Her name was _Akane_, someone whispers to you, once, after he slips up once and mentions her once. She’s dead, someone else suggests, or she broke up with him, or she was kidnapped, or she disappeared, or she was never alive, or she’s imaginary. The theories span about a million miles, and somehow, you really can’t bring yourself to believe any of them.

It’s your literature class when it boils over, when you realize just how bad it is, when your professor singles him out in the middle of January to praise his freeform poetry assignment. The tips of his ears turn bright red, and he stammers out his thanks, and she asks him to read it out loud. You can see his fingers tightening into fists, crumpling the paper in his hands, but he knows as well as you do that she’s the kind of professor who doesn’t take no for an answer.

So he digs through his messy folder, pulls out - it has to be at least five pages, double-sided. And he takes a deep breath, shuffling them into the right order, and it hits you like a bullet that the prompt was _relationships_. You can see half the class perking to attention, coming to the same conclusion as you.

His voice is thin, high and nervous as he reads. The words flow gently over you, softened by his voice, but you pick out the adjectives and metaphors and for a poem about love, there’s a hell of a lot of blood. Blood from a shark, a wounded shark caught in a trap, sinking and snapping at the one trying to set it free. Tearing his arm off, painting the water red, and he still unties the knots, fights so hard to keep her alive - because of course, it’s her. It has to be Akane.

You think you have tears in your eyes when his voice breaks, the ropes snapping and the shark vanishing, leaving nothing but blood and a knife in his back, drowning in water and fear and love. He wavers over the descriptions, of the water rushing through his lungs and the darkness sliding into his vision, and you think maybe he’s speaking from experience.

Man, someone says when he’s done, she does _not_ deserve you. And the class laughs, and Junpei flushes red and mumbles something in response before shoving the papers away, and you wonder where the shark went. Where she is now.

And you watch Junpei spend the rest of the class fidgeting with his pencil, tapping it against his wrist, and you think maybe he’s wondering, too.

* * *

Tenmyouji Junpei disappears again on February 8th. 

Some say he killed himself. Some say he was kidnapped. Some say he’s a private investigator, some say he’s in witness protection, some say he’s a terrorist, some say he just fucking dropped out and can you amateur detectives give it a rest already?

And people forget, as they tend to do, and the spreadsheet goes abandoned and Junpei’s apartment goes to a new freshman that fall and he fades to the back of everyone’s mind. Just one last mystery about him, forever unsolved.

Sometimes, though, you can’t help thinking about him.

_(You think about him when Reverie Syndrome rears its head, when Alex is hospitalized and staring blankly at the wall, when theories are being thrown about worldwide and no answers can be found.)_

_(You think about him in December, when a young woman smiles bashfully and asks to borrow Erica’s laptop to send a quick email, and again when Sigma Klim vanishes off the face of the earth.)_

_(You think about him when a woman’s voice crackles on a radio, teary and shaky, and says_ six of us are dead. _You see pictures of Sigma on the news, his arms destroyed, his one good eye hollow and vacant. Tenmyouji Junpei is on the list of the deceased. Kurashiki Akane joins him. The world follows, with a spray of red and the stench of death.)_

_(You think about him when you flip the page of the newspaper, met with a brief article about the postponement of the Mars mission test and a blurry photo of the participants. Sigma looks like he’s been crying, but Junpei is smiling, the first real smile you’ve seen on his face since last November. A ring glitters on a young woman’s finger.)_

Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, all you can do is hope he’s found some peace.

If anyone deserves it, it’s him.

**Author's Note:**

> I have 0 idea where this came from honestly but here we are!!
> 
> anyway junpei is my son/grandpa and I would die for him, thank you for coming to my ted talk


End file.
